Galicia, the northwestern region of Spain that fought for centuries for the preservation of its cultural and literary identity, saw the renaissance of its literature in the second half of the nineteenth century. Since then, this area has produced an impressive number of intellectuals and writers who have used the Galician language and culture as the mark of their books and whose work of recovery and promotion has situated it as one of the best-known regions in Spain and in Europe. One of these writers, Xosé Neira Vilas, has had a life of struggles and many accomplishments as a Galician and defender of the Galician culture, identity, and history. Born in the little village of Gres in Pontevedra in 1928, he had to emigrate very early (in 1949) to America in search of a better life and future, as did many of his contemporaries. In Argentina he met and began a friendship with some of the most prominent writers and nationalists of this time, including Luis Seoane, Lorenzo Varela, Ramón Suárez Picallo, and Rafael Dieste.¹ They would influence his life's purpose and his writings.

In Argentina, Neira Vilas met his wife Anisia Miranda, and together they founded the organization Mocedades galegas [Galician Youth], a group that worked for the promotion of Galician literature and culture to younger generations, for the recovery of the Galician language, and for the revival of cultural and political identity after the Spanish Civil War. He also founded a publishing house, Follas Novas, which was the first distributor of Galician literature outside this region (Rábade 8-9). The creative genius of Neira Vilas gave light to many books of poetry, prose, and short stories. Among his works, it is important to highlight the poetry collection Dende lonxe [From Afar] (1960), the novels Xente no rodicio [People in the Millstone] (1965), Camiño bretemoso [Nebulous Road] (1967), A muller de ferro [The Iron Lady] (1969), and what is called "the child cycle," a group of three novels: Memorias dun neno labrego [Memories of a Farm Boy] (1961), Cartas a Lelo [Letters to Lelo] (1971), and Aqueles anos do Moncho [Those years of Moncho] (1977), in which the protagonists, always children, perceive the hard reality of Galicia in the 1950s and '60s.

Memorias dun neno labrego is considered one of the best-known and most widely read novels of Galician literature, having 23 editions subsequent to its initial publication in 1961 (Alonso 13). The novel tells the childhood experiences of Balbino, a poor boy brought up in Galicia's countryside, whose candid and deep perception of reality puts the reader in contact with the problems of the people living in this land in the mid-twentieth century. In his brief journal, Balbino -- writing for himself but also, as Maria Lucas and Dolores Vilavedra (A recepción 32-33) affirm, writing for an imaginary and benevolent audience that will identify with him -- describes his life in the country, commenting on the injustices of his situation.

He lives with his parents, brother, and aunt. The very poor family survives by working the land for the village boss who takes advantage of them, renting the land for a very high price and taking the majority of their harvest. At the same time, for the smallest problem, he threatens to fire them, pressing Balbino's family to put up with his abuse. Through his innocent though keen eyes, Balbino observes all these injustices and criticizes the incongruent customs and practices that have been imposed for centuries in Galicia, leaving the people under the yoke of slavery created by the government of a few. The protagonist notices how the more the village boss threatens his family with eviction, the more his father gives in and submits to his abuse. Balbino also rejects the customs imposed by the Catholic Church regarding mourning, the respect to authority, and the persecution of foreign ideas because the Church leaves peasants ignorant, narrow-minded, and at the will of their bosses.

According to Rábade Paredes, in Vilas' stories about children, the main objective is to make his readers aware of the loneliness and isolation facing his young protagonists and to extend an invitation to stop it:

a insolidariedade, a incomprensión e crueldade do mundo dos adultos; a presencia opresiva da vila sobre o agro; a explotación e aellamento que a esfera do oficial opera nos humildes; o sometemento xordo ó traballo que escraviza; o aniquilamento da expresión cultural propia polo imperio da dominación allea; a institución castradora do cacique; e, en fin, a presentación dun país hábilmente cultivado para o atraso moral e material, para a sumisión e a permanencia na injusticia, son algúns dos problemas que ante os lectores formula Neira Vilas.... (18)

[the conflict, the incomprehension and cruelty of the adult world; the oppressive presence of the city over the countryside; the exploitation and isolation that the official sphere imposes over the humble; the uncontested submission to enslaving work; the annihilation of one's own cultural expression by the empire of foreign domination; the castrating institution of the tyrant; and, at last, the presentation of a country that has been easily trained for its own moral and material backwardness, for its submission to and acceptance of injustice, these are some of the problems that Neira Vilas presents his readers....]

For Fernández Del Riego, this work was a first and painful expression of the experiences that the author experienced while a child (285), and for Alonso Montero, it was a sort of Galician Marxist Manifesto. Montero views Balbino as an intellectual child. Balbino did not go to school for very long, never went to the university, but questions everything: traditions, characters, what people say, how they act. Without ever having heard of Marx, he has a very clear sense of class and social difference. He knows that in society there are the wealthy and the poor and that his family belongs to the latter. He is aware of class oppression and of the church impositions; however, he rejects the assumption that the poor should submit to this abuse (14-15). Following this analysis of the protagonist as a leftist and his acknowledgement of the beliefs that mark his community and Galicia in general, another perspective that should be taken into account in the analysis of this work is the influence of these beliefs as a text through which to establish the will of those in power.

In his work The Political Unconscious, Fredric Jameson affirms that there is no such thing as a nonbiased, new reading of a text. Any kind of text, written or painted, social or political, has always been read before and interpreted for us. That means that any text, besides having the capacity of being an instrument of ideological control and propaganda, will always remain a tool to preserve the status quo through the reverberation of infinite interpretations that will institute the "correct" apprehension of its meaning: "Texts come before us as the always-already-read; we apprehend them through sedimented layers of previous interpretations, or -- if the text is brand-new -- through the sedimented reading habits and categories developed by those inherited interpretative traditions" (9). For Jameson, texts have a given reading upon which all readers base their interpretation. No interpretation is free from the intellectual and, more specifically, the social and economic context in which it was created. This use of texts as ideological instruments confers the importance of their being the transmitters and modulators of reality, of how things are and even should be. In this context, the concept of the political unconscious, the idea that institutionalized texts are commonly accepted and internalized through the unconscious, will help to expose the elements through which the novel and its protagonist challenge the institutionalized reality. Within the narrative, the different levels of representation will infringe upon the imposed order and the various positions given to each person by authority, society, and history, with the aim of challenging the vision that authorities have about Galicia and its inhabitants. Thus Galicia, as a written, visual, political, social, or even a conceptual idea, is regarded in Memorias dun neno labrego, as the most important text of all.

In the novel, the official idea of Galicia is constantly contested by many of the characters, the most important being Manolito, the Jew and in some ways Manolito's godfather, who does not agree with the idea that living in any other land, particularly America, would be better for this region and its inhabitants. Nevertheless, Galicia as a text is continuously presented in this book as the stereotypical poorest region of Spain, ignored by politicians and without any great role in history. It is the constantly forgotten province that comes under the shadow of the rest of the regions in political and economic relevance. This representation, what Jameson called the "false consciousness," is established on the basis of the dominant class ideologies and broken when the lower classes, the proletariat, identify with their own class and end up overthrowing the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, as Jameson also states, it is very difficult to attain this state of things when, historically, that dominant ideology was the only one existent and the one used by everybody to determine their identity and position in society (283). As an example of the influence of this dominant class, there are for instance the works of historians such us John Hooper, who says Galicia is an area with frequent famines that has streets of major cities filled with "semi naked walking skeletons" (421), an area that was "victim of the dynamics of Spanish history," depending always on the central government of Castile but without being a part of it. Likewise, Angel Smith and Javier Tussell show poverty, oppression and immigration as the main characteristics of Galicia in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Smith states how, at this time,

the region was one of the poorest of Spain. Agricultural development was hampered by the small scale structure of much of the land. Tiny plots, known as minifundios, dominated the landscape and made it increasingly difficult for the peasantry to subsist on the land.... The backward agrarian nature of much of Galicia meant that it was ideal territory for the caciques of the Cánovas Restoration. It was also to remain a relative stronghold of the Catholic Church. (180)

In Memorias dun neno labrego, this region is considered a land of peasants and fishermen whose lives depend on their masters' wishes and plans while their own initiatives and values are worthless. Peasants are portrayed as dominated by a few individuals with power, who in some cases are not even Galician but represent interests and perceptions that are believed to make up the real characteristics of these people. These peasants cannot overcome the mistreatment of their masters. They have the desire to do it, but, as Jameson contends, the future's uncertainty and change prevent them from taking the next step. It is then how these peasants live under the fear that if they break the rules, if they question the bosses' decisions and dare stand up against injustices, annihilation will fall upon them. In some ways, Galicia is once more portrayed as the land of skeletons that Hooper referred to. These skeletons are the result of famines, of domination, and of lack of systems that may prevent exploitation.

In the minds of the peasants, rules are presented as necessary for society's self-government and used by the few to mold all the rest of the groups to compliance under the fear of class extinction. These "official interpretations" and understandings govern society for an indefinite period of time until a group or individual recognizes the fraud and dares to challenge them (30-34). And this is what is required to happen in Balbino's world. Balbino's account of his life and experiences plays with the conscious and unconscious levels of representation to criticize the unjust class stratification that leaves Galician peasants as slaves to the former feudal nobility and rising bourgeoisie. Following Jameson's concept, the narrative of Memorias dun neno labrego shows the mechanisms through which social consciousness represses all historical contradictions and portrays a surface under which unbearable forces are in constant danger of exploding.

According to Jameson, social consciousness (as the unspoken, unacknowledged set of rules that govern social conceptions and interactions) is created in any society composed by groups where collective norms are established by the upper classes. Given that the separation of that society into different strata is a mere illusion generated by those on top, the history and premises that brings this society into existence are always under suspicion and full of contradictions that the less privileged classes will tolerate but also will continuously question:

the very content of a class ideology is relational, in the sense that its "values" are always actively in situation with respect to the opposing class, and defined against the latter: normally, a ruling class ideology will explore various strategies of the legitimation of its own power position. (84)

This consciousness is presenting Galicia once again as a country of peasants needing the guidance of a master and the imposition of social, religious, political, and economic systems that will structure reality and secure survival. That is why in the first line of the novel, Balbino defines himself as "a nobody," offering several reasons to explain this depiction. To begin with, he is a child, and later, under the protection of his family, he is still without a voice. In addition, he sees himself as a nobody because of his life in the countryside, in a little rural community where he does not have access to the governmental or economic opportunities that the big city could offer. As such, taking into consideration that all the political and economic decisions were imposed by the government institutions seated in the big cities, he doesn't have a voice within these decision-making entities either. Finally, he is a farmer, a son of farmers, describing not only himself and his family but all the farmers who live in little villages, work the land, give all their earnings to their masters, and remain in the same state of poverty and desperation. In this regard, then, Galicia, from the point of view of Balbino, could be characterized as a country of nobodies.

Another characterization of Galicia that relates to the notion of this struggle between classes and its ramifications is the peasants' fear of and submission to any type of authority. María Lucas, in her examination of the topic of religion in Memorias, characterizes the peasants' beliefs as a mixture of Catholic dogma and superstition. They follow tradition, value and practice the different rituals, but there is a lack of authenticity, shown through hypocrisy on the part of the people who believe out of fear or obligation and not because they have true faith (81). One example of this is the psychological make-up of Balbino's godmother. Born into the ideology of the Catholic Church, this woman sees the entire world around her not as a consequence of injustices and wrong choices but as part of a God-designed plan. She fears the religious authorities; she lives to follow rules and keep appearances toward the outside world. She tries to avoid any type of scandal or reproach that anybody may accuse her of, and accordingly she demands scrupulous attention and commitment to the religious traditions. In this context, when her husband passes away, she demands that the entire family, including Balbino, mourn for three years: "Encambáronme o loito hai tres anos e con él sigo, sen poder ir ás foliadas, nin vestirme de vello no entroido. Nunca quixen arrepoñerme por non ver chorar á madriña" ["They imposed on me the mourning three years ago, and I am still wearing black, without being able to go to any parties or to dress up as an old man during the Carnival. I never wanted to stand up to them because I didn't want to make my godmother cry"] (49) In the same way, when Balbino's brother leaves to go to America, the godmother orders him never to stop going to Sunday mass, while Balbino's mother offers some prayers to the Virgin to ask for protection for her son. In the same way, the mother wants Balbino to attend and pay attention to all the religious processions: "Reza e mira para os santos" ["Pray and look at the saints"] (40). This religious fervor is not entirely blind faith but the respect towards tradition and a fear for religious authority with power to censor behaviors and get people into trouble with the civil powers. Their influence is also a cause of fear.

One of the portraits of Galicia in the text is poverty and its dependence on the wealthy and powerful to survive. Balbino sees himself as poor but also recognizes the difference between his situation and the life of the son of the village boss, Manolito. For others in the village, including Balbino's family, the fact that Manolito is richer, spoiled, and rude is a given. Acting as the antagonist for Balbino, Manolito eats white bread, dresses nicely, is always very clean, drinks coffee and milk, and does not need to get up early to take the cows to the field. The protagonist, on the other hand, is presented as one who has to accept his responsibilities, his position in society, without questioning it. He has to agree with the fears of the adults, and he has to be respectful and polite with everybody, especially Manolito, who is mean, rude, and beats him up. In spite of all the abuse, what really troubles Balbino is the fact that every adult around him, specifically his father, tries to justify this behavior and their own submission to it: "É o neno do señor e abonda" ["He is the master's son and that is enough reason"] (34). Balbino's family lives at the mercy of Manolito's father and submits to his abuse.

Nevertheless, if Balbino has to accept who Manolito is and what he does to him, this acceptance marks a contradiction between how the masters live in comparison to everyone else. Opposing the lifestyle of Manolito, Balbino eats brown bread (which is, strikingly, the cause of the ulcers in her mother's stomach) and does not have nice clothes but has to save his good outfits and shoes for the most important occasions to wear them. He describes, for instance, how in the summers he walks without shoes when the stones burn his feet, while in the winter, he has to be in the cold, taking care of the animals and dreaming about sitting beside a fire and drinking a cup of soup with bread. This image that Balbino gives in his diary about his life in the village and the fact that he considers himself a nobody is the light that will lead him to believe in the feared revolution that Jameson talks about. Balbino wants to be a practical, decisive instrument of his own life and surroundings, but in his dismay, he states, "Os maiores cánsanse e fannos calar.... Calamos. Porque é perigoso non calar a tempo. E calquera día en calquera luga, facémoslle a pregunta a calquera" ["The adults get tired and tell us to be quiet.... We keep quiet. It is dangerous not to shut up on time. And on any given day, in any place we ask anybody the question"] (58).

Balbino, with a child's mind, is the first to see Galician problems and society for what they are and the first to confront the fear of that society's political unconscious: the fear of annihilation if they break with this slave-like situation. Balbino observes how he himself, like any other person in the village, is part of a system that cannot be challenged or changed but in which he has to fit without questioning: "Tiven mágoa de min por ser un neno pobre. Os pobres de todo que andan polas portas esfarrapados, e as veces ata rouban patacas ou millo para comer, están mellor. Aturan ós de fora pero non ós da casa que queren andar ben co amo" ["I was sad for being poor. The poor who have nothing, they go from door to door, dirty, or steal potatoes or corn to eat, they are in better situation than me. They have to put up with others but not with their families who want to be on good terms with the master"] (34). The protagonist cannot disagree with the way the elite behaves and functions since it is his own family's decision to accept this situation and surrender to their ill-treatment. Time and again in the novel, his family is portrayed as accomplice to their own suffering. They make their decisions based on social and hierarchical rules and expectations. This is what happens, for example, when Balbino runs away from the holy week procession and ends up in one of the fields that belongs to the "Jew." At the beginning of the story and because of the name given to this character, one may assume that the prospective conflict may be one of a religious nature of Catholics versus Jews; nevertheless, as the story develops, it is clear that religion is only an excuse to criticize a hypocritical, undeveloped society that is not able to transform itself and finds in all social depictions an excuse to remain the same.

The character of the Jew is a portrait of the racial and ideological discrimination of a person who dares to stand up to the social establishment. The "Jew," as he is called by everybody in the village, is not obsessed with society's customs and regulations and who likes to think for himself. He is discriminated against because he does not follow the same religious convictions as everybody else, and he does not care about following this nonsense in order to keep the social powers happy and controlled. He observes how people go to church, trying to be on good terms with the priest and to keep up appearances; however,

a xente que vai rezando tampouco atende o que fai. Uns cavilan no hórreo valdeiro, na contribución, na peste das patacas; outros tecen no pensamento as peores aduanadas, e sinten ata cobiza da roupa que poden levar os demáis.... E se Deus é como din, xa debe ter arranxado un inferno para todos os que lle fan burla desta maneira. (43)

[the people who pray do not normally pay attention to what they are doing. Some think about the empty granary, about the taxes, about the potato plagues; others focus their thoughts on how to do the worst harm and they even feel jealous because others are wearing better clothes than them.... If God is the way they say, he must have already prepared a hell for everyone who is making fun of him this way.]

These types of contradictions could be studied under what Jameson calls the "ideological hegemony" or the contradiction of history. Societies, on their basis, are formed succinctly by dominant classes who fight to keep the status quo and avoid a revolution that will take them out of their privileged position and, at the same time, the classes under them, who, with the same fear of losing their positions of underdogs, agree to be the proletariat class and do not revolt: "This suggests, to use another Hegelian formula, that the truth of ruling class consciousness (that is, of hegemonic ideology and cultural production) is to be found in working class consciousness" (290). As seen by the character of the Jew in the novel, Galician peasants and workers strive in the same way to please the authority in order to live in peace and avoid losing their exiguous benefits as poor. In the story, Balbino sees the injustice that the owners of the land are perpetrating against his family and others. Through his eyes, however, the readers see a family and a village that submits so rapidly and conscientiously to the ways of their masters, that they become not only part of that ideological hegemony but its main contributors, enforcers, and supporters. That is why, when the Jew questions Balbino about what he knows about him, he himself acknowledges that he is the only one who is not imbedded in that church culture and that he feels pity for those who think that their souls are patrimony of the priest: "A min tanto me ten; sintóo por eles, que parecen ovelliñas en vez de homes e mulleres. Cadaquén deulle a súa alma a gardar ó cura e o cura non fai mais que estragarlla" ["It doesn't matter to me; I feel pity for them, they seem like little lambs instead of men and women. Each one of them gave their soul to the priest to keep and the priest does nothing except ruin it"] (44). The Jew lives outside the influence of these hegemonic forces (his own choice, in spite of being considered an outsider and shunned by everybody); nevertheless, one does not need outright to reject the principles of the community to be rejected and have to leave. When Balbino's brother leaves to go to America, these hegemonic forces are shown to be the ones that push individuals to depart from their land and families to try to make it somewhere else.

Emigration, at least the type of emigration that forces the individual to leave for a foreign country as the only means for survival, may be seen as another type of slavery. When people go away, they have succumbed to the system, to the social structure and expectations as imposed by the upper classes. These individuals are defeated, and they have accepted their imaginary failure under those imaginary conditions. That ideological hegemony again shows a portrait of Galicia as the land of emigrants, and in many instances it is still considered such. According to Xose Manuel Seixas, in the second half of the nineteenth century and first of the twentieth, around 60% of the people who left Spain to go to America were from Galicia. Emigration was not only a way to raise the opportunities for specific individuals but the means to support Galicia economically and to make everybody aware of the importance of its culture and values (11-12). Ofelia Rey Castelao affirms that, although Galician presence abroad was minimal until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many Galicians were part of the ecclesiastical and administrative elites that established the colonies, and it was not until the nineteenth century when masses of poor peasants started to arrive in Argentina and Cuba in search of better opportunities.

According to Alejandro Vázquez, José Carlos Moya, and María Liliana da Orden, it was at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century when Galicia experienced the highest number of displacements. In the mid 1800s, people started leaving because of a variety of reasons: the two most important being the ill distribution of the land and economic resources, and the fantastic news regarding the never-ending possibilities in the land of paradise across the ocean (Vázquez 55-59). These displacements resulted in the separation of families and, in some instances, the uprooting of men and women who, leaving behind all they had, were going to take a chance and lose everything. In more extreme cases, such as in Puerto Rico, according to Carmen Campos Esteve, many businessmen and administrators became fully integrated in the culture and economy of their new country (18-19). In Cuba also, there was an increase of Galician immigrants mainly in the 1850s, many of whom, according to Paz Andrade, were used to substitute for the African slaves who were on their path to freedom (431).

In this regard, it is important to notice the conversation that Balbino's father and godfather have concerning the people who leave to America and particularly Balbino's brother Miguel who, at the beginning of the novel, is leaving the village. In this conversation, two visions of Galicia reflect different adaptations to that ideological hegemony. On one hand, we have the father, who conceives America as the land of opportunity, where anybody can get rich if he works hard and knows how to save his money. He sees some immigrants coming back to Galicia to buy land and houses and living large, and he believes the "official" version of immigration that young people want to see the world, get an education, know other cultures, and expand their horizons. He is also afraid that Galicia and Spain are not going to have enough space to hold all the people and, as a consequence, he approves emigration as the means to get out of poverty and ignorance, even though he does not want all his children to leave the paternal house.

In studies by Nora Longhini and Corinne Son, Neira Vilas is described as ambivalent in his opinion on emigration. For Longhini, the author in all his works uses characters who have gone abroad or still bear witness to the hardship and brokenness of emigration (54). Corinne Son quotes the author's insights regarding his own experience as an emigrant, affirming that it was simultaneously traumatic and beneficial. To emigrate forces individuals to abandon families, language, and customs, but it also opens a lot of possibilities for young people to become educated or ascend socially (88). In spite of this positive vision of emigration, Neira Vilas, like many other Galician writers, is trying to demystify Balbino's father's idea that everything is better abroad. It is in this way that he uses the character of Balbino's godfather to disassemble the mythical beliefs sustained by many Galician people that the wonderful lands across the ocean are filled with gold, treasures, and easy living. For Balbino's godfather if one works hard, he can survive without leaving the land, even in Galicia.

For the godfather, emigration is a trap created by the government and the upper classes to impoverish the land, to get rid of the people, and increase their own possessions. When somebody was going abroad, generally first he had to sell all his possessions to come up with enough money for the trip and other expenses, and the land was usually bought by the person with the most money in the village: the master or any other person in authority who could possess a bank account. The master then would employ more laborers to work the land and reap the fruit to the point that many villages in Galicia would become old medieval manors, with one lord and many servants. Though some come back rich, many do not make it financially, and some even die on the way to their new countries. Immigrants lose their culture, their traditions, and the knowledge acquired in their land, becoming not more worldly, as Balbino's father wants to believe, but ignorant of customs and social structures of both their country of origin and their new land. Nevertheless, what Balbino's godfather regrets the most is that while the country of Galicia is running on empty and its only inhabitants are children and the elderly, Galician youths are living and working in other countries, improving other economies: "O país está sen exprotar. Se da noite para a mañá non deixasen sair a ninguén, faríamos unha revolución que é o que compre, e todos viviríamos como se merece sen andar esmiñatando en terras alleas" ["In this country nobody works the land. If one day they would not let anybody leave, we would make a revolution, that is what this country needs, and everybody would live as they deserved, without going out to work foreign lands"] (70). Balbino's godfather realizes that the problem with Galician land and peasants is that the land is in the hands of a few, the new bourgeoisie and the old nobility, who possess it but do not work on it. To work the land, they hire cheap laborers who accept their condition as slaves in exchange for survival. Tired of the slavery, the youngsters leave to look for a better life; however, that better life will not be found abroad, and desperation and hopelessness brings about the only exit: revolution.

During the novel and more clearly in the last part, that idea will be a constant in the protagonist's mind. Because of his youth and sometimes his innocence, Balbino asks daring questions that make him the challenger of the social order; they make him confront that political unconsciousness and ideological hegemony for the first (and one may suppose the last) time at the end of the novel. As part of this confrontation, Balbino will see finally that what he is fighting against is not a specific group of people but a fixed system of beliefs and accepted set of values that must be transformed. This transformation will not be completely possible because of that political unconscious that reinforces all the fears in the rest of the characters in the novel and society in general. However, Balbino's stand towards that system will shake the basis upon which it was formed and give him a final escape.

This final revolution, as Balbino conceives it, is explained by what Jameson calls the idea of "ideologeme," "nonsynchronous development," and "cultural revolution." According to Jameson, "ideologeme" is the minimal unit around which a class discourse is organized and a complete philosophical system or proto-narrative is established. Ideologemes may contain themselves in what Jameson calls a "pseudoidea" or a system of beliefs, opinions and prejudices, even in narratives in which the different classes mirror their opposites (87). In Memorias, we have already seen different types, the idea of possessing and working the land, the initiative to mourn and keep the religious traditions, the belief that emigration is the way to escape poverty. Each one of these instances may be considered an ideologeme.

The people of the village where Balbino resides were influenced throughout history by the mindsets and traditions imposed on them by the institutions. Their conceptualization takes place often in the novel when Balbino writes in his diary and above all when he questions the system. That is the reason why he does not understand how his father can respect the master, a cruel and despotic man who is using them as slaves. In addition, Balbino rejects the idea that he cannot defend himself when Manolito beats or spits on him. However, all these questions reinforce a view of society that becomes the opposite of what the traditional government organizations desire. The protagonist not only interacts with the oppressive forces from which he seeks freedom, his family, Manolito's influence, the Church, and his godmother, Balbino also has contacts with subversive voices (people and institutions), including marginalized and non-conformist figures such as the Jew, the emigrants, the undertakers and the Carnival goers. The Jew, for being an independent thinker, the emigrants for having abandoned the land and the undertaker and carnival goers for not following the "God fearing" traditions imposed by the Church and civil authorities, will be seen as dissident and even radical.

This balance created by Balbino between social authorities and outcasts is at the same time what is going to reflect the "nonsynchronous development." This term, taken from Ernst Bloch's article on "Nonsynchronism and Dialectics," refers to the different systematic levels of social intercourse that illustrate the simultaneous functions of the different modes of production and their interaction (141). According to Jameson, in every society there exist different modes of productions that diachronically and throughout history have been substituted for each other. The tribal world gave in to the feudal society, which in time was overcome by the industrial age. Nevertheless, the developing of different systems of production does not occur in a diachronic or synchronic progression but in a process in which each economic and social institution exists independently and at the same time coexists with each other. This heterogeneity can be reflected in texts but also in the societies portrayed in those texts, as it happens in the case of Memorias. In the novel, the tribal society in which Balbino's parents are living with all their traditions clashes with the society of their masters, a still medieval society living in the countryside, wanting to keep its power and refusing to stop the unjust division of classes recognized during the industrial age. There is an example of this when Balbino's father explains to him how he has to respect Manolito in spite of all the abuse he can impose on Balbino: "'É o neno do señor e abonda'. Pero por máis que o sexa paréceme que non ten dereito a darme cos seus zapatiños novos nas canelas, nin cuspirme, nin dicir que, se eles queren, nós teremos que deixar a casa e as leiras" ["'He is the Master's boy and that is enough.' But in spite of that I think that he has no right to hit me in the knee with his new shoes, or to spit on me or to say that if they wanted to we would have to leave our home and land"] (34).

This coexistence between, on one hand, medieval, industrial, and even more fair and socialistic societies (represented for instance by the Jew or Balbino's godfather) and on the other, their experience of progress and history, is a type of "revolution," a "cultural revolution" as it is called by Jameson in which development is based on the grasping of a social formation as a whole, a place where opposing forces live together and transform such society. "Cultural revolution" permits the preservation of different ideologemes that allow the transformation of the society: "The triumphant moment in which a new systemic dominant gains ascendancy is therefore only the diachronic manifestation of a constant struggle for the perpetuation and reproduction of its dominance" (97). In Memorias, Galician society is seen as a whole and growing the seed of a cultural revolution in the sense that the clashing of the different forces is expected to bring a new balance, a new light in which different perspectives may come together and respect each other while walking towards the same end. The fear of the revolution, although stopping the majority of farmers, is the beginning of enlightenment for Balbino and his godfather.

This vision of society brings about not only what Jameson states as social formations in which tribal societies and patterns will coexist with the most modern ones, but it brings the improved performance of the various modes of production. The hope is that these may become independent and not work against each other. In some ways, this independence and the freedom to fulfill his own desires is what leads Balbino at the end of the novel to go away and start a life of his own. In the second to last chapter, Balbino is going back home when, all of a sudden, he is stopped by Manolito and his friends who want to beat him up. Balbino knows how the story will end from his experience other times: Manolito, although a weak coward, will overcome him with the help of his friends, and Balbino will have to submit to his abuse to keep everybody happy and safeguard his family's security. However, tired of this type of life, Balbino fights back and, even mimicking the David and Goliath story, knocks down Manolito with a stone, leaving him unconscious. He runs away but his family tracks him down, and in one of the most painful episodes of the story, his father has to whip him in front of the master, Manolito's father, and pay the three thousand pesetas to cover Manolito's medical expenses.

Balbino's father tries to find a place for his son where he is not going to be in trouble, but Balbino takes the lead about his future and decides to leave for the city instead, finding himself a job where he will not have to be under the mindset and forces that governed his family and village.² With this final episode, the protagonist of the story as well as the text itself breaks with the political and social ideologemes that were pervading that society and achieves that state of "nonsynchronous development" and cultural revolution that Jameson encourages. In the first place, several ideologemes are still in existence. We have already seen the ones that affected Galician society the most; however, with this last situation there are new ideologemes. First, there is the episode of the stone, which Balbino relates as follows: "Anagueime, collín un cantazo e guindeillo con moita forza. A pedra era coma un paxaro mouro, voando.... Eu botei a correr. Foi coma se espertase dun pesadelo" ["I bent, I took a stone and I threw it at him with great force. The stone was like a purplish bird, flying.... I started running. It was like waking up from a nightmare"] (145). There is a new ideologeme created when Balbino finds freedom in the act of going against authority. Until this moment, throughout the novel, the only idea accepted by the society was that of authority; the masters were the ones dictating rules and types of behavior. Balbino's action, though, will bring about another idea: that of questioning and resisting abusive authority. Another type of ideologeme arising from this episode is the idea of individual freedom and dignity. Balbino never liked the idea that his family submitted to whatever the master wanted to do, and it is when his father decides to give in one more time and go to the master's house where he will pay for Manolito's hospital bill and beat up his own son to give him a lesson in front of the master, when Balbino finally explodes and spits in the faces of both of them. Finally, another one of the ideologemes born from this experience is that of independence and personal freedom. Balbino, tired of his family hopelessness, decides to run away and starts living in the city on his own. His decision not only reflects that step of a non-synchronous development in which a society may stop being monosophical and start accepting other points of view but also initiates the "cultural revolution," where the several modes of production coexist among them and there is a dissolution of the fear of belonging to a certain social class.

In Memorias dun neno labrego, as Jameson explained in his work, society and its modes of production rest on the blind acceptance of the economic systems on the part of a majority who depend on them and who see their rejection as a sure path to destruction. Balbino, through his child's eyes, does not see a danger in confronting the individuals who make this possible, but instead sees danger in keeping silent and losing life and freedom for trying to survive under the same modes of repression. Through his eyes, one can confirm that Galicia, as a text, has been written about by the different social classes as a society where the majority does not have the capacity to govern, make its own decisions, and succeed. It is always presented as a poor region where emigration is the only alternative to living under the yoke of the master. Nevertheless, this ideologeme is challenged by many characters in the novel, the main one being the protagonist, who sees this state of things as unjust and nonsensical and who chooses to change it, creating a balance in which the poor are going to have a voice of their own, if not as a group, at least for themselves. In spite of his isolation, Balbino's actions at the end are intended to shake the life of his village although it seems that the changes affect only himself.

¹ Luis Seoane (1910-1979) was one of the most famous Galician painters of the twentieth century. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to a family of Galician immigrants. Very early, he went back to La Coruña, Galicia, with his family where he furthered his education attending law school in Santiago de Compostela. In 1932 he became secretary of the Galician Nationalist Party and started painting illustrations and other works of art for newspapers and also for other writers such as Alvaro Cunqueiro. In 1936, at the beginning of the Civil War, he went into exile in Argentina where he founded Galicia Libre [Free Galicia] (1937), Galicia emigrante [Emigrant Galicia] (1954) and celebrated his first International exhibition, showing engravings, oil paintings, and lithographs. It was in this period of the 1950s when Seoane published his first poetry books: Fardel de eisilado [A Bag of the Exile] (1952) and Na brétema de Sant-Iago [In Sant-Iago's Fog] (1956). Vilavedra credits him with the survival of Galician literature during the dictatorship (Historia 215).

Lorenzo Varela (1916-1978) was born in Cuba although, as it happened with Seoane, his family returned to Galicia where he studied and became part of Galician Nationalist Party. In 1936, at the beginning of the war, he was in Madrid and became a member of the Communist Party, the Alliance of Antifascist Intellectuals for the Defense of the Culture, and the republican militias. Among his works as a poet, it is important to point out Lonxe [Far Away] (1954) and Homaxes [Tributes] (1979). The 2005 Day of Galician Literature was dedicated to him.

Ramón Suárez Picallo (1894-1964) was a Galician journalist, politician, and founder of ORGA (Organización Republicana Gallega Autónoma, or Autonomous Galician Republican Organization) and the Galician Nationalist Party. He was one of the first representatives of Galicia in Congress during the II Republic. In his exile, he founded with Castelao the Consello de Galicia [Galician Counsel] whose main objective was to take over the government of Galicia in the exile.

Rafael Dieste (1899-1981) is one of the best-known Galician writers in Spanish. He was part of the Spanish Generation of 27. He entered the world of literature with the help of another Galician poet and friend Manuel Antonio and very soon became part of the Seminario de Estudos Galegos [Galician Studies Seminary], an organization to promote the study and advancement of Galicia and its culture. During the war he was one of the men in charge of El Mono Azul, manager of the Teatro Español in Madrid, where he also worked with Rafael Alberti and Teresa León. During his exile, he was director of Editorial Atlántida in Buenos Aires, and professor of Spanish Literature at Cambridge and the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico. His two best-known works are Dos arquivos de trasno [From the Archives of the Goblin] (1926) and A fiestra baldeira [The Empty Window] (1927).

² At the end of the novel, Balbino makes up his own mind about what to do once he cannot go back to the village, and he decides to start working for O Landeiro. Although it may seem that Balbino has fallen again in the traps of the same oppressive system, Landeiro is considered by him a much more open and enlightened man: "Berra para falar con un coma se estivese entre cuxos. Pero non é ruin.... Sabe que se me dá por ler e traime libros" ["He yells to speak as if one was among calves. But he is not a bad person.... He knows I like reading and he brings me book"] (154-155).

Alonso Montero, Xesús. "Proemio á vixésima edición." Memorias dun neno galego. Sada (A Coruña): Ediciós do Castro, 2003. 9-24.

Bloch, Ernst. "Nonsynchronism and Dialectics." New German Critique 11 (1977): 22-38.

Campos Esteve, Carmen. "La presencia de los inmigrantes gallegos en el comercio de San Juan: 1825-1846." Jornadas de la emigración gallega a Puerto Rico. Actas del Congreso celebrado en San Juan el 30, 31 de Enero y 1 de febrero de 1996. Sada (A Coruña): Ediciós do Castro, 1997.

Da Orden, María Liliana. "La inmigración gallega en Mal del Plata: trabajo, mobilidad y relaciones personales (1895-1930)." La Galicia austral: la inmigración gallega en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2001. 87-106.

Fernández del Riego, Francisco. Manual de historia da literatura galega. Vigo: Galaxia, 1971.

Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981.

Hooper, John. The New Spaniards. New York: Penguin, 1995.

Longhini, Nora. Buenos Aires na obra de Neira Vilas. Sada (A Coruña): Ediciós do Castro, 2003.

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Moya, José Carlos. "Los gallegos en Buenos Aires durante el siglo XIX: Inmigración, adaptación ocupacional e imaginario sexual." La Galicia austral: la inmigración gallega en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2001. 69-85.

Neira Vilas, Xosé. Memorias dun neno labrego. Sada (A Coruña): Ediciós do Castro, 2003.

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Rey Castelao, Ofelia. "Los gallegos en el Río de la Plata durante la época colonial." La Galicia austral: la inmigración gallega en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2001. 23-51.

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Smith, Angel. Historical Dictionary of Spain. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996.

Son, Corinne. Xosé Neira Vilas y Memorias dun neno labrego: acercamiento a la novela gallega más popular de la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Sada (A Coruña): Ediciós do Castro, 2001.

Toro, Xelis de. "Bagpipes and Digital Music: The Remixing of Galician Identity." Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spain: Theoretical Debates and Cultural Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 237-254.

Tussell, Javier. "Tercera Parte. Época Contemporánea." Historia de España. Madrid: Grupo Santillana de Ediciones, 2000.

Vázquez, Alejandro. "Factores de empuje y condiciones de transporte de Galicia hacia el Río de la Plata (1850-1930)." La Galicia austral: la inmigración gallega en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2001. 53-68.

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---. A recepción inmanente na obra de Neira Vilas. Sada (A Coruña): Ediciós do Castro, 1990.